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Approaching 110 trillion when excluding performance bonus provisions... Sales 171 trillion, new record for 3 consecutive quarters
Supercycle semiconductors drive overall company... Finished products continue to struggle due to cost burden
Annual operating profit forecast for this year raised to 370 trillion won range... Peak-out concerns diluted
Samsung Electronics continued its streak of record-breaking performance for three consecutive quarters in the second quarter of this year, with sales of 171 trillion won and an operating profit of 89.4 trillion won.
Despite the impact of performance bonuses close to 20 trillion won, the operating profit recorded in this quarter alone was more than double that of the entire previous year.
This level is higher than the combined operating profits of Samsung Electronics for the three years from 2023 to 2025 and is an unprecedented record among global big tech companies.
Samsung Electronics announced on the 7th that its consolidated operating profit for the second quarter of this year was provisionally estimated at 89.4 trillion won, an increase of 1,810.3% compared to the same period last year.
Sales increased by 129.3% year-on-year to 171 trillion won.
This operating profit exceeded the market forecast of 84.1606 trillion won compiled by Yonhap Infomax by 6.2%.
As a result, Samsung Electronics achieved record-high performance in both sales and operating profit for three consecutive quarters, starting from the fourth quarter of last year.
The operating profit for a single quarter exceeded double the total for last year (43.611 trillion won).
This also significantly surpassed the combined operating profit of 82.870 trillion won over the past three years, including 2023 (6.57 trillion won), 2024 (32.7 trillion won), and 2025 (43.6 trillion won).
No global big tech company, including Nvidia or Apple, has ever reached such a record, with their respective quarterly maximum operating profits being 53.5 billion dollars (approximately 82 trillion won) and 50.9 billion dollars (approximately 78 trillion won).
Only Saudi state-owned Aramco recorded an operating profit of 86.5 billion dollars (approximately 132 trillion won) in the second quarter of 2022 during the Ukraine war.
Notably, Samsung Electronics' performance this time reflects performance bonus provisions estimated to be close to 20 trillion won over two quarters, including the previous and current quarters.
Therefore, some analyses suggest that if these provisions are excluded, the Q2 operating profit would significantly exceed 100 trillion won, approaching 110 trillion won.
Although specific performance by business division was not disclosed today, the Device Solutions (DS) division, responsible for the semiconductor business, appears to have accounted for most of the company's operating profit.
This is interpreted as the impact of deepening semiconductor supply shortages due to the continuous increase in global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment.
As AI demand expands beyond High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to general-purpose memory, and the AI market also extends beyond generative AI to physical AI and AI infrastructure, strong memory prices are continuing.
Industry forecasts generally expect this trend to continue at least until next year.
In particular, Samsung Electronics is benefiting more significantly from this increase in demand, leveraging its world's largest memory production capacity (CAPA).
Recently, the company has also been expanding its proportion of high-value-added products, such as being the world's first to mass-produce and ship HBM4, the 6th generation HBM.
While some concerns about a "peak-out" (slowdown in semiconductor industry growth) have recently been raised, Samsung Electronics is pursuing long-term capacity expansion by successively signing long-term supply agreements (LTAs) with big tech companies.
Yonhap Infomax's market forecast for Samsung Electronics' annual operating profit this year has been revised upwards from 366 trillion won (based on a 3-month compilation) to 374 trillion won (based on a 1-month compilation).
On the other hand, the Device eXperience (DX) division, which handles finished product businesses, is analyzed to have not escaped relatively sluggish performance due to the continuous cost burden from rising prices of key components such as semiconductors.
The securities industry estimates the operating profit for the Mobile eXperience (MX) and Network business divisions to be between 500 billion and 1 trillion won, and for the TV (VD) and Digital Appliances (DA) business divisions to be less than 100 billion won, respectively.
Samsung Display is estimated to have recorded an operating profit similar to the previous year, around 500 billion won, and Harman, the automotive electronics subsidiary, is estimated to have recorded an operating profit of 200-300 billion won.
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